Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Archives

Church and Dogma

Christ to Catholicism

PART ONE: APOLOGETIC FOUNDATIONS

IV. Recognizing the True Church

by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

There are two basic positions in the medley of world religions outside the
Catholic Church. One group of religious bodies professes lineal descent from
the society that Jesus Christ established during His stay on earth. These are
all the churches of Christendom separated from the unity of Rome. Another and
larger group has either no historical dependence on the teaching of Christ,
or, as in Mohammedanism, the relation is negligible. And these are the countless
Oriental and African cults whose origin is generally pre-Christian and in some
cases, like the primitive religion of China, has a traceable ancestry from third
millennium B.C.

Any reasonable Catholic will ask himself what right he has to claim that his
Church, alone of all the religious systems in the world, has the fullness of
divine revelation and the guarantee of absolute truth. How does he know?

His method of proving that Catholicism is true will be determined by the purpose
he has in view. If he intends to show that the Catholic Church today is the
organization that Christ founded, he will examine what qualities the Savior
wanted His Church to have, and if no other Christian body has them, then only
Catholicism is the veritable Church of Christ. Since the time of Bellarmine
(1542-1621) who wrote against the Reformers, four visible properties have been
used to identify authentic Christianity from its pseudo counterpart. Christ
made His Church one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Consequently whatever Christian
body answers to that description may legitimately call Jesus Christ her founder.
An objective analysis of Roman Catholicism shows that only she satisfies the
conditions and therefore she alone was founded by Christ and is animated by
His divine Spirit.

But if a Catholic approaches the question on a global scale, and wants to prove
that no other religion outside of his own is true, whether Christian or otherwise,
he will not be immediately concerned with comparing the original Church of Christ
with Catholicism. He will look for a broader and more inclusive principle of
discrimination by which any religious system can be tested and its divine authorization
verified. Such a principle is the norm of miracles, which even the unlettered
primitive should recognize. It says simply that when God communicates a revelation
(as claimed in some form by every organized religion), He will confirm the mysteries
He reveals and make them rationally acceptable by working miracles in favor
of the truths that he wants believed. Or put negatively He will not work miracles
in support of a pretended revelation because, as Master of miraculous phenomena,
He would be actively cooperating in a lie.

When Vatican Council in the last century set about defining the nature of the
Catholic faith, it chose the latter method of proving the Churchs divine authority
by way of miracles, in preference to the former from the four qualities, on
the assumption that the method chosen really includes the one transmitted. [1]
After declaring that without faith it is impossible to please God, the Council
explained how, in order to enable us to fulfill our obligations of embracing
the true faith and steadfastly persevering in it, God established the Church
through His only-begotten Son and endowed her with unmistakable marks of her
foundation, so that she could be recognized by all as the guardian and teacher
of the revealed word. What are these unmistakable marks? They are all the
many marvelous proofs that God has provided to make the credibility of the Christian
faith evident, (which) point to the Catholic Church alone. Specifically the
Church herself is a great, a perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefutable
proof of her own divine mission by reason of five classes of miracles that
God has been working in and through her to the present day. There is the Churchs
remarkable propagation, her exalted sanctity, her inexhaustible fruitfulness
in all that is good, her catholic unity and her unshakeable stability. [2]

Phenomenal Propagation of Catholic Christianity

It would be naïve to invoke the miraculous assistance of God to explain a mere
numerical increase in the Churchs membership since the first mass conversion
on Pentecost Sunday. There is a purely natural sense in which every religious
institution multiplies its members, and even purely civil bodies like states
or anti-religious movements like Communism can have a remarkable growth in numbers
with the passage of time. In order to be supernatural, the development should
be more than numerically considered; it must be in a society that loses none
of its organic unity no matter how rapid or wide the extension; the increase
must be in the face of great obstacles, violent opposition and contrary to the
normal laws of social expansion; and above all, it must occur in spite of a
natural repugnance to join or remain in an organization that places the heaviest
demands on human generosity in voluntary submission and self-control. Moreover,
to be genuinely miraculous, the propagation should be truly universal and extend
to all Classes of people, in every nation and period of history.

First Three Centuries of the Christian Era. The diffusion of Christianity
from the death of Christ to the Edict of Constantine (313 A.D.) was so remarkable
that it became one of the strongest arguments of the second and third century
apologists. In his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, St. Justin points to the fulfillment
of the prophecy of Malachy as a confirmation of the Christian religion. Your
nation, he says, speaking of the Jews, does not even now extend from the rising
of the sun to the going down thereof, for there are nations among which none
of your race has ever lived. But there is not one single race of men---whether
barbarians, or Greeks, or persons called by any other name, nomads, or vagabonds,
or herdsmen dwelling in tents---among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not
offered to the Father and Creator of the universe in the name of the Crucified
Jesus. [3] Justins dialogue is dated about 155 A.D.

Towards the end of the second century, Tertullian adds further details on the
number and variety of converts to Christianity. Addressing himself to the pagans,
he tells them, We are but of yesterday, yet we have filled every place among
you: cities, islands, fortresses, towns, marketplaces, camp, tribes, town councils,
the palace, the senate, the forum. We have left nothing to you but the temples
of your gods Unarmed, we could have overcome you. For if such a multitude of
men as we are had broken loose from you and had gone into some remote corner
of the earth, you would have had to look around for people to rule. There would
have been more enemies than citizens left to you. [4] Even allowing for rhetorical
exaggeration, this testimony is substantially accurate and corroborated by contemporary
pagan writers. Thus Pliny the Younger as Proconsul of Bithynia wrote in the
early second century to the Emperor Trajan for instructions on how to apply
the laws of the empire in ferreting out the Christians. This contagious superstition,
he complained, is not confined to the cities alone, but has spread through
the villages and the rural districts. Then more hopefully, It seems possible,
however, to check and cure it. Certainly at least the temples, which had been
almost deserted, begin now to be frequented. He therefore suggests leniency,
since it is easy to imagine what multitudes may be reclaimed from this error,
if a door be left open for repentance. [5]

Plinys letter to Trajan gives only a hint of the barbaric persecution waged
against Christians precisely because their continued expansion was hostile to
the state religion of paganism and therefore construed as a threat to the empire
itself. Thus according to ancient records Diocletian and Maximian issued edicts
for the suppression of Christianity, when they saw almost all men deserting
the worship of the gods and attaching themselves to the Christian people. [6]
And before them, reaching back to the first generation after Christ, when Nero
noticed that not only at Rome but everywhere a large multitude were daily falling
away from idolatry and coming over to the new religion, he vowed to destroy
the heavenly temple and as the first persecutor of the saints of God crucified
Peter and executed Paul. [7] Nor was the hostility limited to government circles,
but private individuals shared in the common distrust and hatred of what Tacitus
called the enemies of the human race, and others a confederacy to be detested
and rooted out. [8]

Consistent with these sentiments, the Christians were first despised and ridiculed,
then deprived of their civil and political rights, and when this failed to subdue
them, were imprisoned and put to death. Various forms of mockery were added
to enhance their dying agonies. Covered with the skins of wild beasts, they
were doomed to die by the mangling of dogs, or by being nailed to crosses, or
to be set on fire and burned after twilight by way of nightly illumination.
[9] Yet their only crime, as Tertullian protested, was the Christian name; which
to the pagans meant sacrilege and treason; sacrilege for not worshiping the
Roman pantheon and treason because the religion of the gods was identified with
the prosperity of the state.

In spite of all this oppression, however, the Church grew in numbers and influence
until by the fourth century it quite literally dominated the Roman world. The
evidence is so convincing that historians who cannot be suspected of favorable
bias report that, about the year 300 the human race of the Mediterranean belonged
without exception to this Church, in so far as religion, morals and higher attainments
of these nations were of any consequence. [10]

Corresponding attempts to explain the remarkable diffusion on purely natural
grounds have been fruitless. The most notorious effort was by Edward Gibbon,
a lapsed Catholic, who attributed the Churchs expansion to purely natural causes,
notably the zeal of its missionaries, its doctrine of rewards and punishments,
reputed miracles, purity of morals and heroic charity of the early Christians,
and the Churchs strict discipline and organization. To which we subsume and
ask: was it only a natural power that produced this extraordinary zeal, motivated
such exalted virtue and maintained the strong discipline that proximately and
ostensibly accounted for the Churchs development in spite of every opposition
against it? [11] If nothing more than nature was in operation, and nature is
repetitive, the origins of Christianity should have been duplicated many times
over. But no other religious movement in history, making such demands on concupiscence
and human pride, has even approximated the Christian phenomenon.

Growth of the Church in Modern Times. Comparable to the development
of the early Church is the propagation of the Catholic religion in our own day.
Perhaps it is less spectacular in the absence of a startling comparison between
nothing at the beginning and a large body after a short time. But the growth
is no less phenomenal when studied in the full context of contemporary history.
The Churchs demands for self-sacrifice are no less today than during patristic
times. If anything they are more exacting where Catholics live on such intimate
terms with people who do not share their convictions of faith and moral attitudes.
To live in a world that may not be openly hostile, but whose institutions and
philosophy of life go counter to the most radical instincts of Catholicism,
and remain faithful to Catholic ideals; to further live these ideals so faithfully
that those on the outside are attracted to share them, often at great cost;
and to dedicate time, money, and effort, even oneself for a lifetime, in order
to give others what are believed to be the treasures of the faith---this can
safely be compared with the obstacles that pre-Nicene Christianity overcame
to reach the diffusion that we call miraculous.

Moreover, we have a norm of comparison between Catholicism and other religious
bodies that is quite as valid as the contrast between the Church at Pentecost
and the Church when the Edict of Milan was published. What other religious
group can show the steady organic growth of the Catholic Church, say, in the
past one hundred years? In absolute numbers, the world increase was about 200
million to make a present total approaching half a billion members. Mere quantity,
however, is not so important. Other religions have also grown in membership,
even though not so extensively. But none of them can be legitimately compared
with Roman Catholicism. The religions of the East are not juridical societies
with a unified authority and consequently should not properly be called churches
except in the widest analogous sense. Some, like Buddhism whose founder did
not teach a personal deity, are scarcely theistic; others, like Mohammedanism,
are so tied in with the political power as hardly to be distinguished from the
national state. Greek Orthodoxy has become the unwitting tool of atheistic
Communism; after a generation of iron control by the Marxist government, its
Patriarch blandly declared that everything in the world takes place in its
good time and according to Gods will, as in this case the State, built on a
democratic basis, has allowed the rebirth of the Church in its high dignity.
This was brought about by the will of God, and our Church was given full ecclesiastical
freedom, protected in this by the laws of the State. [12] The mélange of Protestantism
is so lacking in juridical authority and disunited on basic doctrinal issues
that its numerical increment cannot be regarded as a growth in membership, except
within the sectarian limits of each denomination.

Catholicism, on the other hand, has not only increased by family accretion,
which itself requires higher than natural motives to resist the practice of
contraception; it continues adding by adult conversions an average of one million
persons every year. Even a minority of heretical apostasies is evidence to
the Churchs continued growth as being more than human achievement. For heretics
are made, says Augustine, from the ranks of those who even if they were in
the Church would go astray notwithstanding. Since they are outside the Church,
they are of very great service, not by teaching the truth, of which they are
ignorant, but by exciting the carnally-minded Catholics to seek the truth, and
the spiritually-minded to disclose it. [13] This providence, we may believe,
includes such major defections as the Protestant Revolt, whose break with the
Church temporarily depleted her ranks but whose opposition, often in good faith,
has served as a powerful stimulus for Catholic zeal and evangelization.

Exalted Sanctity and Miracles

Personal sanctity is an elusive concept. The title of saint has been applied
indiscriminately to such varied individuals as Savonarola, John Wesley and Mahatma
Gandhi. It is found in Scripture as a generic name for all the believers.
And most technically, in the Catholic Church only those are called saints
who have been duly canonized by papal authority.

In the present setting, however, as evidence of divine approval, exalted sanctity
means the faithful practice of the moral virtues over a long period of time,
under severe trial and temptation, and to a degree that clearly exceeds the
native capacity of the human will. All the virtues are comprehended, but especially
charity, fortitude and temperance. Moreover the testimony in favor of these
virtues must be convincing. Pious sentiments are not enough; there must have
been deeds, tried in the crucible of suffering and testified by unimpeachable
witnesses.

Historical Evidence of Holiness. In the first five centuries of the
Christian era, saints were canonized by popular acclaim after a persons death
following a life of great holiness. All the ancient Fathers of the Church like
Ambrose and Chrysostom, virgins like Melania and Eustochium, and missionaries
like St. Patrick belong to this category. Their moral heroism was too obvious
to be lost on the most prejudiced observer and is proved by authentic records
that are still extant. Athanasius Life of Anthony (251-356 A.D.) for
example, has come down to us in several versions, including Syriac and Armenian,
all dating from the fourth century and drawing on first-hand knowledge of the
Father of Monasticism.

From the sixth to the twelfth centuries, the bishops reserved to themselves
the sole right of examining the virtues of people who died with a reputation
for sanctity; and finally in 1170 Pope Alexander III universally prescribed
that the final verdict on sainthood must come from the Holy See. Present legislation
on how to determine heroic virtue is summarized in the Code of Canon Law, covering
142 canons, and going into the minutest detail of judicial scrutiny. The method
has been substantially the same for nine hundred years. There is first a gathering
of all the documents relative to the persons whole life; letters received and
sent, writings of every sort including spiritual notes and diary and testimonials
from eye-witnesses. This mass of material is submitted to Rome, where the Congregation
of Rites under the Pope decides if further investigation is permissible. If
so, there begins a tedious (years long) informative process in all the places
where the candidate for sainthood lived and was known personally. Witnesses
are examined and asked to testify under oath on all they know from childhood
to death about the persons virtues and failings. In the single canonical process
for St. Francis Xavier a total of 202 witnesses was interrogated in India alone,
giving sworn testimony that runs to five hundred pages of printed text. [14]
On completion of the informative process the cause for beatification is formally
introduced and from then on the critical examination or apostolic process begins.
A committee of five judges in the diocese spends at least two years going over
the data to decide whether there is good evidence of moral heroicity. If the
conclusion is affirmative, a report is sent to Rome to each of three committees
acting independently; if two of the three favor heroicity they offer their conclusions
to the Pope who, in session with a fourth committee decides for or against declaring
the investigandus as Venerable, which means that he or she had practiced
virtue to a heroic degree.

The following is a sample questionnaire to be answered by the Roman judges
on the virtues of temperance practiced by the person under examination. Did
he show abnegation of his will by internal mortification? Did he control his
anger and the movements of concupiscence, and curb an effusive temperament?
Was he always meek and patient in suffering whatever persecutions came his way?
Did he ever show himself disturbed on such occasions? Was he abstemious as
regards food and drink? Did he faithfully observe the fasts prescribed by the
Church (and the Rules of his Institute)? What was he in the habit of eating
and when? Was he temperate in the use of sleep? Did he sleep on the ground,
or if in bed, was it hard and uncomfortable? Was he sparing in the matter of
clothing? Did he like to have his room (or cell) very simple, and avoid bodily
conveniences? Did he control his flesh (even) with extraordinary fasts and
penances? Did he subdue the other bodily senses and never allow them illicit
pleasures? Did he prefer to be silent and alone, and was he grave and modest
in his walk? And finally did he appear moderate in his speech and actions?
[15] With all its detail, however, the foregoing is only one of more than ten
similar questionnaires on all the major virtues, including poverty, chastity
and obedience in the case of religious.

Miracles as the Fruit of Sanctity. No matter how convincing the evidence
of heroic virtue in a Servant of God, the Church will not proceed to his beatification
until physical miracles, scientifically proved, had been wrought through the
persons intercession. [16] Two, three, or four miracles are required, depending
on the kind of testimony that was used in the canonical process, i.e., whether
eye or ear-witnesses, or mere documents. One prescription from Canon Law illustrates
the care exercised in testing miraculous phenomena. In order to prove the
miracles, two experts are to be hired expressly for this purpose when the case
first opens; and if they agree that phenomenon is not miraculous, it must be
discarded forthwith. (Moreover) since it often happens that in discussing miracles
there is question of passing judgment on a cure, the experts must be outstanding
in the field of medicine or surgery. In fact, if at all possible, they should
be chosen from among specialists in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease
which is supposed to have been miraculously cured. [17] Centuries may intervene
before the requisite miracles take place. They are indispensable. However,
once beatified, more miracles are needed, two or three depending on the type
of beatification. And again, two or more hundred years may elapse without fully
attested miracles. Until they occur, clearly through the intercession of the
prospective saint, he is not canonized. The number of people raised to the
honors of the altar varies with different periods of the Churchs history.
Pope Pius XI beatified 406 men and women, and canonized 40.

But miracles in canonical processes are not the only kind that God works through
the merits of His saints, in attestation of the Churchs sanctity. Equally
numerous and better known are the phenomena which occur at famous shrines like
Lourdes and St. Anne de Beaupre. At Lourdes, annual average since 1858 is 78
cures declared at the time of occurrence as naturally inexplicable. Of these
4 have been further subjected to rigorous testing over a period of several years
after the reported miracle and found absolutely beyond the powers of nature.
[18] Among the unbiased witnesses of what happens at Lourdes in the late Alexis
Carrel, Nobel Prize winner in 1912 for work on vascular ligature and grafting
blood vessels and other organs. The experience of watching one of his patients
suddenly cured of tubercular peritonitis while praying at the shrine prompted
this commentary on the power of prayer at Lourdes. In surroundings where men
pray, there are frequent reports of cures being obtained in response to supplications
addressed to God and His saints. The Medical Bureau at Lourdes has rendered
a great service to science in demonstrating the reality of such cures. Sick
people have been healed almost instantly of such afflictions as lupus of the
face, cancer, kidney infections, ulcers, pulmonary and peritoneal tuberculosis,
and tuberculosis of the bone. The phenomenon nearly always occurs in the same
way. First great pain, then the feeling of being cured. In a few seconds,
or at most a couple of hours, the symptoms disappear and lesions are automatically
repaired. The miracle is characterized by an extreme acceleration of the normal
processes of healing. Never has such acceleration been observed among surgeons
and physiologists in the course of their clinical experience. [19] Carrels
experience at Lourdes, when publicized, first cost him a temporary loss of prestige
in the medical profession and later contributed to his conversion from agnosticism.

What is most significant about miracles since apostolic times is their close
integration with sanctity under the aegis of Catholic Christianity. Reported
miraculous occurrences outside the Churchs atmosphere are not impossible, but
even then would be found to confirm what is objectively true and in accordance
with Catholic teaching. However, the evidence for non-Catholic miracles, when
reported, has not been scientifically conclusivebarring always those phenomena
which indeed surpass the powers of nature but are clearly demoniac productions.

Inexhaustible Fruitfulness in Benefiting Mankind

It would easy to draw up a list of benefits that Catholics and others have
drawn from the Churchs treasury over the centuries: her conquest of Roman
paganism and raising the status of women; her preservation of the wisdom of
antiquity, in Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, that would have been lost except
for the patient toil of the monasteries; her bold defense of the rights of man
and his dignity against unjust oppressors; her shining example of courage against
the vandal hordes, the Moslem terror and currently the inhumanity of atheistic
Communism. Underlying these and similar benefits, however, is a more radical
contribution that cuts across the history of all nations, going back to the
origins of the Hebrew people and finding its full expression in the rise and
dissemination of Christianity.

Although this contribution is scarcely appreciated by most people, it involves
the transmission from God to the human race of those fundamental religious truths
on which the whole structure of private and public morality depends. It is
true that absolutely speaking, our reason by its natural powers can arrive at
a correct knowledge of the one personal God whose providence governs the world,
and also of the natural law which the Creator has written in the hearts of men.
But for most people the obstacles to this knowledge are insurmountable. Concupiscence
and lack of time, mental limitation and the pressure of daily needs prevent
the average persons from acquiring any more than the barest minimum about the
moral law and its necessary, so that religious and moral truths which by their
nature are not beyond the capacity of the mind, might be known by everyone with
absolute conviction, with ease, and without any admixture of error.

If the Catholic Church had done nothing else than transmitted to mankind this
revelation from God and preserved it from deterioration, she would justify her
claim to being the greatest benefactor of the human race.

Revelation Identified by the Catholic Church. Before the time of Christ,
God communicated His revelation to chosen prophets like Abraham and Moses, and
protected its integrity by a special providence over the Jewish people. In
the first century of the Christian era, He extended and amplified this communication
in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and His followers, up to the death of John
the Apostle, about the year 100 A.D. Within the ambit of the Judaeo-Christian
revelation, therefore, was contained all that men would ever need to understand
the moral law and be faithful to its observance in future generations. But
human nature is blind and prone to error in the very act of recognizing the
revealed word of God, as evidenced by the strange vagaries among the ancient
Jews on such basic truths as the immortality of the soul, and by the plethora
of gospels and apocalypses, histories, acts and epistles, all claiming to be
inspired, that arose in competition to the authentic writings of the New Testament.
With every new heresy, there appeared another gospel. Thus the Gospel of
the Egyptians was created by the Gnostics who rejected matrimony; the Ebionities
wrote the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles as an attack on the birth and
genealogy of the Savior; the Gospel of St. Peter was a Docetist fabrication
which made Pilate a hero and questioned the reality of Christs bodily death
and resurrection.

Due to the Churchs vigilance, however, these apocrypha were duly recognized
as spurious and exposed in scores of writings that have come down to us from
the early patristic age. The Church has only four Gospels, wrote Origen,
the heretics have many, among which there is one according to the Egyptians
and another by the Twelve Apostles. Basildes (a Gnostic) has also dared to
write a Gospel and attached his name to it. I know of another Gospel by Thomas,
one according to Mathias and several others. But of all the evangelical writings
we accept only what the Church has approved, namely, the four Gospels. [20]

Church as Custodian of the Revealed Word. After identifying the true
revelation and transmitting it to the people, the Church had the further task
of preserving it from corruption at the hands of pious meddlers or unscrupulous
persons who will falsify the word of God. An outstanding example of this type
of vigilance was the condemnation of the Protestant Reformers by the Council
of Trent. Breaking with fifteen centuries of Christian tradition, they excised
seven books of the Old Testament, along with part of five others, and dropped
from one to nine books of the New Testament, including the Apocalypse and the
Epistle of St. James. Luthers test for the validity of any book in the Bible
was the conformity of its teaching with what he a priori laid down as
the essential element of Christianity; Calvins was even more elastic, claiming
that the Holy Spirit individually teaches every man to distinguish the word
of God from its spurious counterfeit. [21] One result of this tampering with
the biblical canon was a new concept of the moral law which postulated a divine
responsibility for all our actions, whether good or bad, and reduced human liberty
to a mere name, or made it a creation of the devil who deceives us into thinking
we are free agents on the road to salvation.

Natural Benefits Derived from Divine Revelation. Incalculable blessings
follow as a logical consequence to the revelation of religious truth, even in
the natural order. Cut off from the moorings of revealed truth, there is no
limit to which the human mind cannot go into denying the very foundations of
the moral order. Science, according to a recent Soviet publication, sets
out from the proposition that there is nothing in the universe except matter
and its motion, that the universe is one and material. Religion on the contrary
sets out from the position that alongside the material world there is also the
non-material, spiritual, supernatural world which is prior to and determines
the material world. Consequently there must be a conscious intervention in
the process of destroying religion by waging a special war against it. [22]
This attitude is not confined to militant communism but in greater or less degree
is the mental aberration of all who have lost their faith in the revealed word
of God.

Comparable to the knowledge of a personal deity is the admission of mans responsibility
for his own actions, which is written on every page of the Scriptures and which
those who reject the Bible may vaguely recognize as a handy postulate but scarcely
acknowledge as absolutely true. The real grounds for supposing free will,
says William James, is pragmatic. [23] It has no guarantee in objective reality.

On the level of social morality, how many of those who are ignorant of Christian
revelation or who knowing it follow their own interpretation, still believe
that marriage is permanent contract which binds one man and one woman until
death, and that any liberties outside the marital union are adultery? The same
with contraception and pre-marital relations. The Presbyterian Church, writes
one spokesman for that body, does not legislate for its people on personal
moral issues. Nothing in the Churchs teaching, however, can be construed as
forbidding an intelligent, conservative, and unselfish employment of birth control.
The commandment of God to our first parents, Be fruitful and multiply, was
given at a time when the world was underpopulated. Presbyterians do not believe
this precept is relevant today. [24]

The glory of the Catholic Church is that she has remained faithful to the trust
committed to her, by safeguarding the content and meaning of the Judaeo-Christian
revelation and as a consequence keeping alive the fountain-head of all peace
and happiness in the worldwhich is the knowledge of the one true God and of
mans duties to himself, to his neighbor and his Creator.

The Catholic Unity of Roman Catholicism

What appears to be the earliest use of the title Catholic Church is found
in the authentic record which commemorated the martyrdom of St. Polycarp (156
A.D.) and was dedicated to all the communities of the Holy and Catholic Church,
residing in every place. [25] In the third century, Cyprian appealed to the
Churchs unity as the mark of her divinity. God is one and Christ is one,
and one is His Church, and the faith is one, and one His people joined together
by the bond of concord into a solid unity of body. [26] By the fourth century
this unbroken concord of her members, spread throughout the world, was crystallized
in the article of the Nicene Creed which to this day is part of the Eucharistic
liturgy, I believe in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. [27]

As defined by the Vatican Council catholic unity comprehends two evidences
of the Churchs miraculous origin and conservation: her unity of membership,
where every rank and type of personality is joined together in common obedience
to the Sovereign Pontiff; and her universality, which extends to all nations
and regions of the world, in every age since apostolic times.

In order to appreciate the transcendent character of this catholic unity we
should reflect on the inherent difficulty that even a small group of men finds
to agree on almost anything which their reason does not convince them is objectively
true. The difficulty increases in proportion to the sacrifices that agreement
may demand and rises to a practical impossibility where the concord must prevail
over a long period of time.

If this is valid in the ordinary affairs of life, it is eminently true in the
sphere of religion, where the natural instinct is to rebel against any imposition
by human authority and reject any person or society, no matter how exalted,
that would stand between the individual and God. Hence the provision for autonomy
in all religions outside of Judaism in the Old Law and of Catholicism in the
New, to preserve a liberty of action that is independent of any earthly agency
claiming to speak with the authority of God.

Catholic Unity in Faith and Doctrine. Since apostolic times, the first
care of the Church has been to preserve inviolate the deposit of faith which
Christ had committed her. St. Paul rebuked the Galatians for deserting the
teaching of the Master, telling them that even if an angel from heaven should
preach a gospel to you other than that which we have preached to you, let him
be anathema. [28] Throughout the subsequent history of the Church, the primary
concern was always to safeguard the unity of faith against the encroachment
of heretics who would divide the seamless garment of Christ. Within a century
of the Edict of Milan, four general councils were convened to clarify and define
certain doctrines that were controverted, with never a thought of compromise
and often at the cost of heavy losses among the clergy and laity who refused
to accept the Churchs interpretation. One after another, the recalcitrants
were condemned as heretics: the Arians for denying the divinity of Christ,
the Pelagians for rejecting the necessity of grace, the Albigenses for reviving
Manichean dualism, the Protestants for teaching that man is absolutely corrupt
and incapable of any good, the Jansenists for holding that grace is irresistible,
and modern Rationalists for making reason the sole arbiter in matters of faith.

As a result of this constant vigilance and the demand for submission of her
members to the Roman Pontiff, the Churchs solidarity is acknowledged even by
those who are alien to her principles. The unity of the Roman Church, Reinhold
Niebuhr told the World Council at Evanston, is indeed impressive, and in some
respects enviable, in comparison with our unhappy divisions. [29] But Catholic
unity is more than enviable because it is more than natural, as the least study
of other religious systems will show. Whatever agreement they have is social
rather than theological, and beneath the surface of a common name is a medley
of beliefs on the most fundamental issues that cannot, except by an abuse of
language, be called unity of faith and doctrine.

Disunity Outside of Roman Catholicism. In the western world, the most
familiar disunity is among the Protestant denominations, where 200 million Christians
are divided into more than a thousand sects, and these in turn into further
autonomous denominations. Sectarian apologists claim that the essence of Protestantism
is the freedom of the Christian man, and its appeal is to those who are willing
to assume the responsibilities of liberty as well as enjoy its privileges.
Consequently they openly encourage dogmatic individualism. Unlike the false
freedom in the Catholic Church, which consists in liberty to believe and do
what the infallible authority of the Church says is true and right, Protestants
are free to accept or reject, as the Spirit moves them, even what their own
denomination proposes as the official doctrine. [30]

The fruit of this denial is a rampant sectarianism of which thoughtful
Protestants are deeply ashamed and which the current ecumenical movement is
trying to control if not eradicate. Divisions among pagans and infidels, they
admit, are expected and understandable. But for those who are called Christs
people to be at enmity with one another, to withdraw from one another, to have
no intimate, brotherly dealing with one another, is a scandal. It is a scandal
even to the unbelieving and half-believing world around us. [31] Protestants
are divided on every issue of faith and morals, and every level of religious
practice. Not even the nature of God is exempt from the discord, for though
most churches subscribe to the formula, I believe in God the Father Almighty,
some, like the Christian Scientists (who call themselves Protestant) profess
an open pantheism, summarized in Mrs. Baker Eddys maxim that, All is infinite
Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All in All. [32] They are further
divided on the person of Christ, from the extreme of accepting the Nicene Creed
that Christ is consubstantial with the Father to making the Incarnation a mere
symbol of Gods love for mankind. The Scriptures are still believed to be inspired
and inerrant by certain denominations, like the strict Baptists and conservative
Lutherans. But for most Protestants, Bible authoritarian is dead. During
the past century and a half, it has crumbled under the impact of biblical and
philosophical criticism. [33] In place of the bible, human reason and personal
experience have become the ultimate norms of faith, or, as among the Quakers,
the Inner Light, which is variously described as the Indwelling Spirit, or the
Voice of God, speaking to the soul without the encumbrance of any book or institution.
Some Protestants baptize in infancy, others only after adult profession of faith,
and some do not require baptism for salvation, and much less for church membership.
Most Protestants have some semblance of the Eucharist which they call the Lords
Supper, but they differ infinitely in describing what Holy Communion means.
For some it is the physical body of Christ, for others His body in spirit, and
for most only a symbol or sign of His redemptive love. But the acme of discord
is their confusion about the very essence of Christianity, whether Christ ever founded a Church
or only started a movement, and if there is a Church what are its qualities and
can it be identified. Perhaps the most candid statement at the World Council of
Churches in 1954 was the admission by one of its ranking leaders that while
verbally "we proclaim that in some profound sense the Church is one, we are divided and
stultified over defining that unity. That, of course, is a glimpse of the obvious.
If we were agreed on the nature of the Church's one-ness, our struggle
between each other would be over. [34] Yet they will not have unity at

the
price of submitting to an ultimate authority. "Only a church with a high
command" like
Roman Catholicism can achieve unanimity. "Protestantism has no such dictator."
and therefore "has no united voice. It does not want it on those terms [35] --which is
both an explanation of Protestant discord and a proof that the unity of Catholicism
is divine. Human nature is too radically autonomous to be submissively united on
such a cosmic scale, except through the special intervention of God.

The Church's Invincible Stability

There is a close relation between
unity and stability, but they are not the same thing. While unity refers to the Church's members,
who agree among themselves under a common visible head, stability describes the Church's perdurance
in keeping the same
doctrine, worship and juridical structure, substantially unchanged over the
centuries in spite of opposition, persecution and the native inconstancy of her members.

Stability and unity are
related as cause and effect, since without a stable body of principles and organization,
the concord of her members would never be guaranteed and the very possibility of change would provoke
disunity, at least between those who feared
innovation and those who did not.

Constancy of Apostolic Doctrine. Hostile critics of the Church accuse her of having "promulgated many new doctrines," since
"the Pope boasts that all rights exist in the shrine of his heart, and
whatever he decides and commands within his church is spirit and right, even
though it is above and contrary to Scripture." [36] The fact is that of all religious systems in the history
of the world, only Catholicism has remained
faithful to the principles of her Founder, and those who charge her with the
contrary are only hiding their own instability behind the accusation.

The
history of the Catholic Church is the history of her conflict with elements
within or outside her body that sought to rob her of the
deposit of truth that was built
upon the Apostles. All the general councils were convoked to withstand this
threat of innovation, and heretics were proscribed for
disagreeing with the Church's
original doctrine. In ancient times, at the Council of Constantinople, the Nestorians were condemned because they contradicted
"the tradition in the Church
of God from the beginning. [37] The Semi-Pelagians, who claimed that the power of believing "inheres in us naturally and not
by a gift of grace," were condemned as "adversaries of the apostolic
teaching. [38] And currently, in the Oath against Modernism, a Catholic is required to say, "I
entirely reject the heretical misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change
from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. [39] Even
the doctrines which are most
controverted by her enemies, the Church has derived from the original sources
of faith. Thus in proclaiming the Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin, Pope Pius XII could
accurately say that "the truth of this dogma is based on Sacred Scripture.
It is sanctioned
by the worship of the Church from the most ancient times and is completely
in accord with all other revealed truths." [40]

In contrast with this sedulous care to preserve the apostolic
tradition, other Christian bodies have all departed in greater or less measure
from the revelation found
in the Scriptures and universally professed by the nascent Church. The Trinity of Persons in one God, the union of divine and human
natures in Christ, the bodily presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the perpetual
virginity of the Mother of God, the existence of hell as eternal punishment,
the Sacrifice of the Mass,
the remission of sins at baptism, the prohibition of divorce with remarriage--are only partial evidence of how deeply and widely
the churches separated from Rome have broken with the faith which the Apostles
preached and for which thousands of martyrs in
the early Church had sacrificed their lives.

However, Catholic stability of doctrine is not only unique
among the bodies of Christendom.
It is also unparalleled outside of organized Christianity. Added to the motley collection of sects among the oriental religion
is their constantly shifting position on the most elementary principles of morality
and doctrine. Hinduism
is a fair example. With no ecclesiastical organization to unify its 300 million adherents, split into several thousand casts,
we should expect a wide deviation of beliefs between such extremes as the Brahman
philosophers and the illiterate
"untouchables" or Sudras. But Hinduism is more than divided; it is
by nature changeable
due to the very concept of the deity. According to its most prominent exponent, "Hindu thought believes in the
evolution of our knowledge of God.
We have to vary continually our notions of God until we pass beyond all notions into the very heart of the reality itself. Hinduism
does not distinguish ideas
of God as true or false, adopting one particular idea as the standard for the whole human race. It accepts the obvious fact that
mankind seeks its goal of God
at various levels and in various directions, and feels sympathy with every stage of the search. The same God expresses itself at one
stage as power, at another
as personality, at a third as all-comprehensive spirit, just as the same forces which put forth the green leaves also cause the
crimson flowers to grow. We do
not say that the crimson flowers are all the truth and the green leaves are
all false. The bewildering
polytheism of the masses and the uncompromising monotheism of the classes are for the Hindu the expression of one and
the same force at different
levels. [41] Every man therefore is encouraged to form his own notion of the
deity, on the assumption that none of the ideas is objectively
true, destined to be changed as different circumstances
arise.

Stability
of Catholic Worship and Government. Parallel with the Church's constancy of doctrine is the
unbroken tradition of her religious practice and juridical structure. While
adapting herself in accidentals to the needs of her members at various times, her stability in worship and government
is a scandal to those who either have no Christian heritage
of their own, or who believe that development in other areas calls for a similar
change in the forms of religion.

In
the field of worship, the Sacrifice of the Mass is a classic instance of unchanging
constancy. Liturgical ceremonies have been added and subtracted, but the substance
remains the same. The text of the words of Consecration goes back to the Synoptic Gospels,
repeated by St. Paul and confirmed by the most ancient writers.
Likewise in the sacrament of baptism, the same continuity of practice--using water with the invocation of the Trinity. Even
the method in which the water is now used, by ablution, is sanctioned
by apostolic custom, dating from the first century and instructing the presbyter
to "pour water on the head three times in the name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit. [42] Extreme Unction, fasting and abstinence,
Sunday observance, prayers for the dead, veneration of the saints and, in fact,
all the substantials of Catholic piety can be traced--often in the smallest
detail--to practice of the early Church.

Underlying the Church's
constancy in everything else is the stability of her government that for nineteen
centuries has literally withstood the gates of hell and that even her adversaries
are forced to admire. Concretely this means of the institutions in history,
none has a longer and more contradicted tenure than the papacy. In the previous
chapter we have seen something of its origins, which gradually developed with the Church's expansion but from the
very beginning was a monarchy that vindicated its right to judge the
consciences of men because it was founded by the Son of God.

Militating against the papacy has been every
form of human malice and pride. Up to the Edict of Milan, twenty-six of the
first thirty-three popes were martyred. With the Church's deliverance from pagan
oppression arose an equally dangerous political control by the State, which
the popes resisted under bribery, threats and physical violence.
Champions of papal liberty like Gregory I and VII, Innocent II and Boniface VIII, stand as symbols
of resistance to encroachment by the civil power.

But the worst enemies of
the Church were those nurtured in her own household. Although the popes, as
a class, have been men of high integrity, there were tragic exceptions. John
III (955-964) was elected Bishop of Rome at the age of eighteen and in less
than a decade proved so unworthy that a synod, ordered by the emperor, tried
and deposed him on charges of sacrilege, simony, perjury, murder and incest.
Benedict IX (1032-1048) was driven out of Rome because of his wicked life. To
most people, Alexander VI (1492-1503) epitomized the degradation of the papacy,
when the Vicar of Christ condoned the public crimes of his illegitimate children
and bartered the highest offices in the Church for political gain.

The forty years of the Great Western
Schism (1378-1417) typify the virulence of passion that would have destroyed
any other institution. Though validly elected, Urban VI gave cause for complaint
by his arbitrary conduct in trying to reform the French segment of the College
of Cardinals. They proceeded to choose one of their own number, Clement VII,
as anti-pope, and until the Council of Constance settled the dispute by electing
Martin V, there were three lines of rival claimants to the papacy: the Roman started by Urban VI, the French
under Clement VII, and the Pisan, begun
by Alexander V. Theologians, canonists and even saints were divided in their allegiance, St. Catherine of Siena recognizing
Urban VI and St. Vincent Ferrer acknowledging Clement VII. True, the
Great Schism was not schismatic in the ordinary sense of the term because no question of faith was involved and
all parties upheld the supremacy of
the Holy See. The problem was: which of the two or three claimants is
the legitimate pope? That the issue should have been solved at all is remarkable, considering what happens in
civil governments under less trying circumstances. But that in spite
of this trial, the papacy grew in strength and vitality
has baffled secular historians, even when they admire the phenomenon. "What human institution
could have withstood the ordeal?" asks de Maistre. A bitter enemy of the
popes, Gregorovius, declares that the Schism "raised the papacy from decadence
to a new eminence, and showed the world once again how the mystical faith of the people endows
the pontiffs with power that can rise to glory even when apparently dead." [43]

One of the curiosities of religious psychology is the intransigence
of sincere non-Catholics
when faced with the Church's continuity. Forced to admit the evidence, they cannot see the cause. Few Protestants have written
more eloquently on the stability
of Catholicism than Lord Macaulay. "There is not, and there never was,
on this earth," he wrote, "a work of human policy
so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. No other institution is left
standing which carries the
mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and
when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian ampitheatre.,
The proudest royal houses
are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of .the Supreme Pontiffs.
That
line we can trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the Pope
who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and
far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in
the

twilight of fable." Republics
and kingdoms have risen and fallen. Yet "the Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique; but full
of life and youthful vigor." After
this eulogy, we are not prepared for the conclusion. "It is impossible
to deny that the polity of the Church of Rome is the
very masterpiece of human wisdom. In
truth, nothing but such a polity could, against such assaults, have borne up
such doctrines. The stronger our conviction that
reason and Scripture were decidedly
on the side of Protestantism, the greater is the reluctant admiration with which
we regard that system of tactics against which reason and Scripture were arrayed
in vain." [44]

Macaulay's
attitude is less surprising in the light of what the Vatican Council teaches on the credibility of the Catholic Church. "Like
a standard lifted up for the nations, she calls to herself those who do not
yet believe, to be recognized
by all as the guardian and teacher of the revealed word." The objective
evidence is not enough. Unless "the most merciful
Lord stirs up and helps those who
are wandering astray, to come to knowledge of the truth, [45] they may admire
the Church's doctrine and liturgy, and praise her constancy in every storm,
without realizing that these phenomena are signs of miraculous approval and
a mark of the presence of God.

Chapter IV - References

From the published proceedings of the Council we know that the original draft of the statement on recognizing the true Church gave the historical method, from the properties of unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity. But this schema was completely modified, leaving only the passage "unmistakable marks," and substituting for the four notes the present method by way of miracles. Acta Concilii Vaticani (Collectio Lacensis) VII, 511-512 (for the original draft), and 161 (for the point at which the via miraculorum was introduced.

Though normally one or two miracles are required for the beatification of martyrs, the pope may dispense from this obligation. However there is no dispensation from miracles for canonizing a beatus, whether he was martyred or not.

By the eighteenth century most Protestant divines had reinstated the books of the New Testament that were dropped by Luther and Calvin. But to this day the Protestant Bible has a mutilated Old Testament canon, on the theory that the Catholic Scriptures include writings acceptable to the Jews of the Diaspura but not to the Jews in Palestine. However, this theory is the later rationalization of an act of rebellion against the Church's authority to determine the content of revelation.